It is a rite of parliamentary passage for every newly appointed cabinet minister: their debut appearance before the House committee that will serve as their main point of contact with their Commons colleagues for the duration of their tenure.

And rarely, if ever, have the pre-existing political tensions been quite as frayed as was the case when Ontario rookie MP Karina Gould arrived at the procedure and House affairs committee on Tuesday morning for an hour-long Q&A on the mandate letter that she received from the prime minister when she agreed to take over the democratic institutions portfolio earlier this year.

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It was, after all, not even a week ago that Gould was forced to troop before the cameras in the Commons Foyer and confirm that, as stated in that very same mandate letter, her priority to-do list would no longer include coming up with a plan to make the 2015 federal election the last to be held under a first-past-the-post system.

Not surprisingly, the government’s decision to pull the plug on electoral reform came up on Tuesday, courtesy of New Democrat MP Nathan Cullen and Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, both passionate proponents of proportional representation who were charter members of the now decommissioned all-party panel on electoral reform.

Cullen challenged Gould to justify the move — which, he pointed out, was made public just hours after the two held their first face-to-face meeting, during which she actually asked him for suggestions on how to proceed on the file.

Gould, however, seemed disinclined to go beyond the now familiar talking points: despite the best efforts and hard work of all involved, there was, she maintained, simply no consensus on rejigging the ballot system, and while the status quo first-past-the-post may not be perfect, no system is, and the current one has served Canadians for 150 years.

May, meanwhile, took a different tack in her one allotted question, and asked Gould if she might consider going back to the all-party negotiating table to see if there’s any “middle ground” that could be reached that would allow the government to bring in legislation, an offer that Gould politely, but firmly, dismissed.

Gould also found herself defending her predecessor’s decision to bring in legislation to change the laws on voting rights for Canadians living abroad, as well as undo controversial restrictions on voter identification brought in under the previous government.

It wasn’t that New Democrat MP David Christopherson or his party necessarily disagree with the changes, he stressed, but that then-minister Maryam Monsef had introduced the bill while the committee was still going through an exhaustive review of recommendations from outgoing Chief Electoral Officer Marc Mayrand, many of which dealt with issues covered by the proposed new law.

But while Gould assured him that she hopes to have a good working relationship with both the committee and MPs on all sides of the House, she didn’t appear willing to accede to his request for an apology, even on behalf of her predecessor, for preempting the committee.

(The bill in question, C-33, was tabled in November, but has not yet been called forward for second reading.)

At the other end of the table, Conservative MP Scott Reid quizzed Gould and the senior PCO officials accompanying her at the table on the current status of the data compiled as part of the much-maligned mydemocracy.ca survey, which is, apparently, still controlled by Vox Pop, the private company involved in design and roll-out, although it sounded as though it may eventually be made available to parliamentarians.

His colleague, Blake Richards, seized on Gould’s plan to ask Canada’s security and e-spying agency to look into the possible risk of hackers targeting either Elections Canada or political parties, and wondered if she would also be looking into the threat of “foreign influence” over the federal democratic process, specifically by funding third party groups in Canada.

Gould noted that her mandate letter actually does refer to the need to examine spending limits and other political financial rules, including those imposed on third parties.

Finally, the four Liberal MPs on the committee took a distinctly small-c conservative approach in putting questions to the minister: in most cases, they would just read a section from her mandate letter, or a line from her opening statement, and ask her to expand further on it.

The one exception was Liberal MP Ruby Sahota, who brought up the phenomenon of “fake news,” which Gould agreed was definitely a concern, even going so far to muse that, as far as ensuring an informed electorate, the media could almost be considered a ‘democratic institution’ itself.

In response to a somewhat worried query from the Conservatives later in the session, she quickly clarified that she was not suggesting either she or the government should get involved in controlling the news.

By the end of the hour, it’s not clear anyone was all that much wiser than when the meeting had begun, but Gould had, at least, made it through her first appearance without incident.

She’d best not relax just yet, however: the committee is expecting her to return for a second hour in the near future. On the plus side, at least she’ll have a better idea of what to expect when she does.

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